Before sending his team out to face the Dodgers for a final time in 2012, Bud Black stressed the importance of a strong finish by the Padres.

“We’ve played solid baseball in the second half,” said the Padres manager. “It’s always good to end the season on a high note.”

The odds of that happening lengthened Thursday night as the Dodgers remained in playoff contention by handing the Padres a second straight loss before 32,403 at Petco Park.

The one consolation prize was the Padres topping two million in home attendance for the eighth time in their nine seasons downtown.

The 8-4 defeat in a three-hour, 40-minute marathon -- that featured 24 hits, three errors and 23 stranded runners -- came on the heels of Wednesday’s 8-2 rout dropped the Padres to 3-6 over their last nine games – a run of three straight 2-1 series losses to National League West rivals Arizona, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

After pulling to within five games of .500 at 71-76 after a 19-6 run, the Padres have slipped to eight games below .500.

And the road doesn’t get much smoother over the last six games.

The home schedule ends this weekend with three games against National League West champion San Francisco -- which still has an outside shot at posting the best regular season mark in the league. The Padres then fly to Milwaukee for three games to end the season.

After dropping Tuesday night’s series opener, the Dodgers dominated the Padres the last two games of the series to finish the season with an 11-7 edge on San Diego. In their two wins, the Dodgers out-scored the Padres 16-6 and out-hit them 28-16.

The Dodgers scored their first six runs Thursday with two out – four coming when the Padres were one strike away from getting out of the fifth inning. And former Padre Adrian Gonzalez was involved in three Dodger rallies.

Gonzalez led off the fourth with a two-strike single to right off Padres starter Casey Kelly – who was one of four players who came to the Padres in the 2010 trade that sent Gonzalez to the Boston Red Sox -- and scored to break a scoreless tie on back-to-back, two-out singles by Luis Cruz and catcher A.J. Ellis.

Kelly retired the first two Dodgers he faced in the fifth. After Matt Kemp doubled, Kelly intentionally walked Gonzalez. This is where things went awry for the Padres as four straight Dodgers reached base when the Padres were a strike away from getting out of the inning.

Kelly tried to come inside on Hanley Ramirez on a 1-and-2 pitch and hit him to load the bases. Kelly then hit Shane Victorino on a 2-and-2 pitch to force in the game’s second run. Cruz followed with a two-run single on a 2-and-2 pitch from Nick Vincent and A.J. Ellis singled home the fourth run in the inning on a 1-and-2 offering from Vincent.

The Dodgers made it 6-0 in the sixth on a second straight, two-out double by Kemp and an RBI single by Gonzalez, who was 6-for-13 in the series with three RBI.